The Department of Anthropology Colloquium Series presents

"Chasing Science:  Children’s Brains, Scientific Inquiries, Family Labors"
with Rayna Rapp, Professor of Anthropology, New York University

Thursday, December 2, 2010
3:30-5:00 p.m.
Social and Behavioral Sciences Gateway (SBSG), Room 1517

Over the last three decades, an escalating portion of U.S. school children has been classified for special education; those with diagnoses entitled to services now number 15% of all public school pupils.  At the same time, American scientists have focused increasingly on juvenile brains, studying what one psychiatric epidemiologist labeled "social incapacities".  In this talk, Rapp reports on the laboratory labors of two scientific groups: neuroscientists who scan children's brains in search of resting state differences according to diagnosis; and psychiatric epidemiologists who look to epigenetics to distinguish differential diagnostic populations.  The talk will focus on the medicalization of childhood differences, and the harmonies and discordances between what researchers and parents understand to be at the root of children's learning and social capacities.  The talk will be presentation of an ethnographic perspective on relations of kinship, disability and biomedical science. 

For further information, please contact Norma Miranda, nmiranda@uci.edu.